Democrats Would Make Iraq Timetable in Bill 'Advisory'
Congressional Democratic leaders are moving to make their proposed timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq "advisory" as they seek to reconcile two versions of war spending legislation into a single bill that they plan to pass next week, according to several House members.
The compromise language would keep the deadlines included in the original House bill but make them nonbinding, as the Senate version did, and would allow President Bush to waive troop-readiness standards, lawmakers said. Bush has vowed to veto legislation with timetables in it, calling it a schedule of surrender, but Democrats hope to show that they are being flexible and the president rigid by softening the terms.
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I am actually not against this idea. I have been watching the polls and a majority of Americans are on our side on every issue related to the war except I have been watching over time the support for a clear solid deadline for withdrawl has been falling since the beginning of the year.
The American public wants Congress to go about the business of leading this country, it doesn't want a potentally year long stalemate over funding the troops as Bush takes billions out of the Air Force and Navy to fund the war. If you look at the Pentagon Budget its clear Bush could keep this going for a very long time and wipe out Air Force and Navy readiness in the mean time.
You can be certain that by the time this money runs out in the Summer of 2008 in the heat of campaign season the democrats won't be blamed if Petraeus succeeds in bringing a low level of stability to Iraq as they continued to fund the war nor will they be blamed if the country and its security forces will desolve into anarchy because they recommended he get the troops out by then. Either way the war will be more unpopular and at the end of the day the democratic candidate will be in a strong position in the general.
ABC News/Washington Post poll finds 51 percent think U.S. will lose war, 66 percent think Iraq was not worth fight; Dems, Pelosi get higher marks in approval and trust.
Yet, given pro and con arguments (avoiding further casualties vs. potentially encouraging Iraqi insurgents), a pullout deadline is not widely popular.
The public divides about evenly, 51-48 percent, on setting any deadline. It's about the same specifically as on the effort by congressional Democrats to force withdrawal by no later than August 2008.
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